Page 13 of Butterfly Effects

I glanced back at him. “What?”

“What did finishing the equation cost you?”

“I already told you Artie didn’t wake up. My cousin Annie didn’t get her memories back. My family doesn’t trust me anymore, not the way they did before I went and forcibly reminded them that I was a monster.”

He squeezed my hand. “You’re not a monster. You didn’t do any of those things on purpose.”

“I still did them.”

Mark didn’t have an answer to that. We walked on.

Bit by bit, awareness of Mark’s hospital room returned to me. I opened my eyes and I was sitting next to his bed, his hand held in mine, machines beeping and buzzing around us. I looked toward him. His eyelids were fluttering, struggling to open. One of the machines began beeping more loudly.

“Dr. Morrow,” I said, loudly.

Mark’s eyelids continued to flutter. And then the screaming began. Loud, unending screaming, entirely mental, projected through the bond created by our skin contact. I jerked my hand away. The screaming got softer but didn’t stop.

“Dr. Morrow!” I shouted, trying to be heard above the din. I clapped my hands over my ears, knowing the screams were entirely inside my head but unable to stop myself.

The door slammed open and the doctor was there, wings fully mantled and feathers atop his head standing erect, like he was trying to make himself look bigger to scare away a threat. He took in the room at a glance, then rushed forward, pulling something out of his pocket and shoving it down the front of Mark’s hospital gown.

The screams in my head cut off abruptly as the anti-telepathy charm settled against Mark’s skin. I lowered my hands from my ears, eyeing him as warily as a hiker eyes a rattlesnake. “Mark?” I asked. “You awake over there?”

His eyes stopped trying to open and he sagged back into the bed, motionless. Dr. Morrow closed his wings, and for several seconds it was just the two of us staring at Mark, waiting for something to occur.

“This is part of why I wanted to speak to you,” said Dr. Morrow finally. “You were unconscious for a matter of hours, not days, and the sound of your awakening still reverberated through the hospital.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Does an infant know they cry upon being born? We do many things on instinct in this life, and we don’t recognize them all. I was concerned that Mr. Wilson would do exactly what he’s done, and while I took the steps available to me, your presence seemed the best way to blunt the impact.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And did it?”

“I know this won’t sound sincere to you, but yes, it did. To the best of my knowledge, no one is bleeding from the ears, and I credit that to you being here to take the brunt of the damage.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your nose.” He produced a handkerchief from inside his coat and offered it to me.

I took it gingerly, then pressed it to my upper lip. It came away glistening with thick, clear fluid. If I were human, that would probably have been mucus. But I’m not, and so I had to admit it was hemolymph, probably from a burst vessel somewhere in my sinuses.

People don’t really realize how much of the human—or cryptid—skull is actually taken up by sinuses. The “telepath nosebleed” in movies and comics is a cliché, but it’s a cliché with a basis in anatomy. When something puts too much pressure on my brain, those are the easiest physical tells.

I wiped my upper lip more vigorously, then tapped it with my fingertips, verifying it was dry. “Can I keep this?” I asked, holding up the hankie.

“Please,” said Dr. Morrow. “Now that Mr. Wilson is awake, we’ll have to discuss the further specifics of his … care…”

His voice trailed off as a strange humming sound filled the room, growing higher and higher, clear and crystalline as a finger being run along the rim of a perfectly cut wine glass. It hummed and sang and trilled, and I recognized it like a captive-raised bird might recognize the song its mother sang while it was in the egg.

I stood, only half-aware of the motion, turning my eyes toward the ceiling. The sound had no source and no direction, but it felt like an “up” in some indefinable way, and so that was where I looked for it.

Dr. Morrow mantled his wings again, lifting them defensively as he looked around the room. “Do you hear that?” he asked needlessly.

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Is that Mark?”

“I don’t think so.”

Dr. Morrow moved to start checking the machines still connected to Mark’s body, moving with a quick efficiency that I could only envy. The hum got louder.